When we help clients conceptualize a future transaction, I think the best starting point is actually pretty simple: What does life look like after the transaction?
Not “How fast can we sell?” or “What multiple can we get?”—but what happens after the deal closes. Because once you get clear on that, everything else becomes more logical, more intentional, and frankly, more doable.
The Right Starting Block: Life After the Sale
Life after sale is the ultimate starting block, whether you’re one, two, three, or even five years out from selling, or you’re not selling right now but there’s at least a possibility someday. It’s an exercise worth going through because it gives you something most business owners don’t have early enough in the process: confidence.
If you don’t have a picture of a full and meaningful life after your exit, you don’t know what you’ll need financially. How, then, can you know what you need financially from the sale of your business?
And if you don’t have that confidence, or if you run the numbers and they’re not large enough, that’s not a failure. That’s valuable information. It tells you you’ve got decisions to make.
“Here’s What’s Left.” Then What?
This is where working with tax advisors becomes particularly valuable. You start to build a cohesive plan and say:
- “Here’s what’s left if we sell the business within the range we think it’s worth.”
- “And here’s what life looks like after.”
That second part matters just as much as the first because if it’s not enough (or it doesn’t feel like enough), you’ll naturally start asking the fundamental questions that most people avoid until late in the game:
- Should I downshift to a consulting role?
- Am I starting another business?
- Do I want work somewhere else?
- And do I like that—or not?
This isn’t some abstract concept. This is the reality of what “after” actually looks like, and it’s better to look at it early than pretend it’ll sort itself out later.
Build Yourself Into Life After the Transaction
To me, you start to actually build yourself into life after the transaction and see if you’ll like it. Once you can say, “Yes, this is the range of value, and this is what I think my life could look like after the transaction,” then you move forward through the progression.
And that progression looks like getting the business ready for a sale, starting with the fundamentals.
The Next Logical Step: Clean, Sale-Ready Financials
After the “life after” picture is clear, the next step is getting the books cleaned up and in order for a sale. A lot of business owners run their profit and loss statements in a way that makes sense for taxes by maximizing deductions and minimizing tax payments in a given tax year. That’s normal.
When you go to sell your business, you usually want to maximize profit. So, you start thinking differently:
- How are we accounting for the business?
- How are things structured?
- What needs to be clean, consistent, and defensible?
- How do we present earnings in a way that reflects the real performance of the company?
Ultimately, you’re thinking about how the business is structured and reported to maximize sustainable earnings, because that’s what the market cares about.
Who’s Your Deal Team?
Then you get to another major step that people often underestimate: Who’s my deal team?
Who do I want to hire to help me through this substantial and meaningful transaction? Because even if you’ve built something incredible, a transaction is its own process; it’s not something you want to navigate alone, especially when the stakes are this high.
Start Where It Actually Starts
If you’re thinking about selling (whether it’s soon or years down the road), the best place to begin is by asking: What does life look like after the transaction?
If you want a practical next step, sit down and run the exercise. Get clarity on what you need the transaction to produce, and what you actually want your “after” to look like. Once you have that, everything else—clean financials, add-backs, building the right team—has a clear order and a clear purpose.
We have a deep specialization in helping owners prepare for and navigate the sale of their business. If this is an area in which you are looking for more proactive professional guidance, we invite you to connect with our team and experience the difference.